Makokan’s guide led him to the home of the elder, the leader of the Yusula Oma, but the only difference between his house and those of the other villagers was that it had been raised a little higher to avoid dampness. Makokan climbed the five steps of the wooden ladder into the house. Hohsalle sat with his back to the door, facing the elder across the hearth, but he turned when Makokan entered.
“Ah, there you are. Where’s Milalle?”
“She said she wanted to stay and work a little longer.”
Hohsalle scowled. “Idiot. You should’ve brought her with you. I told you not to leave her on her own.”
Makokan’s lips twitched. “Do you really think that Lady Milalle would listen to me when she’s focused on her work?”
Hohsalle snorted. “I suppose you’re right.” He waved Makokan over and gestured for him to sit. “The elder’s been sharing some interesting information, but I’m having a little trouble understanding. Help me out a bit, would you?”
In other words, Makokan thought, the young master can’t understand a word he’s saying. The elder’s accent must be pretty thick.
He turned to the old man.
“May I speeg noo?” the elder asked.
Makokan fought down the laughter that bubbled up inside him. No wonder his young master had struggled. The man spoke with a heavy Yukata accent. The words he used and his intonation stirred up memories of the past. Makokan had often heard people speaking like this when he was a boy.
“He’s asking if it’s all right to speak now,” he translated, and Hohsalle nodded.
“Diz plaze more mij bide ’n’ many git zign die.”
“He says that many more people here are getting sick and dying of tick bites.”
The elder explained that the tick population exploded every year when the weather began to warm. From spring to fall, tick bites were unavoidable, and the marsh people just accepted them as a fact of life. Sometimes, a rabbit that had been bitten would leap about as if it had gone mad. The Yusula Oma believed that the creature was trying to exorcise the tick’s spirit, which had burrowed inside it, but in the end, it was doomed to go stiff as a pole and die.
As he translated, Makokan recalled hearing similar stories in his youth, probably from his grandmother. He shuddered, remembering how they had frightened him.
Small animals like rabbits weren’t the only ones that got sick from tick bites, the elder explained. Even the marsh people occasionally came down with fevers and went into convulsions. But in the past, such symptoms had never killed them. Only some years after the Ahfal Oma had been driven from the land did children begin dying gruesome deaths after suffering tick bites. And recently, adults who were old or weak, such as the woman Hohsalle and Milalle treated, had also been stricken.
The elder scowled and cursed the Zolian immigrants.
When the Ahfal Oma had lived on the plains, they gave the marsh people mare’s milk in return for their work. It was a miraculous cure-all, and no one had died from tick bites in those days. The god Kinma loved the fire horses, and the animals brought bounty to the people, not just while they were living, but even after they died.
Sometimes, fire horses were bitten by ticks, but they never went crazy like the rabbits. Occasionally, the fire horses succumbed to disease if they were old. In such cases, the spirit of the tick was exorcised, and the horse was buried in the sacred mound at the edge of the marsh to send its soul to the god. Bordered by rocks and trees, the mound grew thick with the lichens that the fire horses favored, and it glowed dimly with the light of Kinma.
The Ahfal Oma dog handlers waited until the horse grave glowed before leading their pregnant bitches there to eat the decaying flesh. Blessed by that sacred light, their pups became strong and clever.
When he reached this point in his explanation, the elder paused, his face troubled, and looked down at his hands. Eventually, he raised his eyes and continued, although haltingly.
The coming of the settlers had changed everything, he explained. They cut down part of the forest to create a watering hole for their sheep. This was a great sin, but the Ahfal Oma had reined in their fury because the settlers hadn’t touched the trees on the side by the burial mound. However, cutting the forest had changed the mound nonetheless. It had failed to glow with Kinma’s light when horses poisoned by toxic grain were buried there to purify them, and the dogs who ate those carcasses died in agony.
Many of the sheep raised by the settlers also perished from the toxic grain, and the settlers buried them at the edge of the forest. However, it was too close to Kinma’s mound, and many times, the hounds of the Ahfal Oma dug them up and ate them. The dogs that ate the tainted sheep flesh died just like those that consumed fire horses killed by toxic grain. A rumor spread that the god Kinma was angry, and the Ahfal Oma began to show their wrath to the settlers.
Some of the sheep and horses that consumed the wheat survived, but they were weakened for it because many later succumbed to tick bites. They were buried in separate mounds, which were soon thickly covered in lichens. Noticing that these mounds had begun to glow, just like Kinma’s mound once had, the dog handlers brought their pregnant bitches to eat the flesh. Far from dying, they survived and birthed pups that grew unusually fast. And they reproduced prolifically, bearing young that became even smarter and more fearsome than the Kinma dogs of the past.
As he reached the end of his tale, the elder sighed heavily. The Ahfal Oma had exacted vengeance on the settlers, but it wasn’t enough to appease the god. In his anger, Kinma had brought this illness upon the land. As for the new breed of Kinma dogs, there was something uncanny about them. As sacred beasts and servants of the god, they would never bite the righteous, yet the elder confessed to feeling immensely relieved when Kenoi had taken them off to the Toga Mountains.
By the time Hohsalle and Makokan left the elder’s house, the sun was beginning to sink in the sky. Its slanting rays fell on Hohsalle’s face. He let out a long, slow breath. “Finally, we’ve got something to go on!” He couldn’t suppress the ring of excitement in his voice. “Milalle’s going to jump for joy when she hears this.”
Smiling, he set off toward the marsh where Milalle was collecting lichen. Makokan grinned as he watched his young master break into a trot on the path ahead. No matter what he might say, he clearly adored Milalle. And he was right. She would certainly be delighted to hear the news.
However, when they reached the marsh’s edge, there was no sign of her. Spark ducks flew across the dusk-colored sky and glided one after another onto the water, quacking noisily, but there were no humans in sight. All that they found was Milalle’s collection—a neat row of baskets filled with lichens.
Makokan frowned, uneasiness stirring in his breast. “She might have gone into the forest. Let’s take a look.”
Hohsalle gazed down at the baskets with a wooden expression. His skin was waxen, and he looked surprisingly vulnerable.
Makokan crouched to search for Milalle’s footprints, and suddenly he sensed something. Lifting his head, he saw a man standing at the edge of the forest in the dark shadows cast by the trees.
That looks like…
He was pretty sure it was the little girl’s uncle. Small and stocky, he stared at them as though trying to convey something. His fretful eyes made it clear that some danger was imminent.
Makokan rose and brought a hand to the hilt of his sword, but at that moment, warriors leaped from the trees to his right, brandishing spears. They were garbed in strange clothing, and their breastplates were emblazoned with the symbol of a horse.
Ahfal Oma.
There were eight of them—too many to cut his way through. But Makokan might be able to buy Hohsalle enough time to escape. He braced himself.
“Don’t,” Hohsalle said.
The warriors tightened the circle around them silently. They smelled faintly of horses.
A delicious aroma drifted through the air. Preparations for supper must have been well underway. Although this room was a considerable distance from the kitchens, the scents of cooking sometimes wafted this far depending on the wind direction.
With a sigh, Tohlim put down the document he was reading. Yotalu had handed it to him when he left Kazan, instructing him to deliver it to Hohsalle. It contained a detailed record of infections among the settlers in every part of the country. Whenever he read things like this, Tohlim was forced to acknowledge the superiority of Zolian administration. They didn’t shirk their duties, even when it came to settlers in the remotest corners of their empire, recording in precise detail a diverse range of matters.
The Kingdom of Aquafa had never been governed like this. The frontier peoples had been given autonomy over their own affairs, and reporting was left to their discretion. Of course, the king used the Molfah to gather knowledge secretly and also received reports from the Otawalle, so he probably knew everything he required, but the reports were gathered from a very loose network of sources and could never have been summarized in concrete figures.